Water sports in Cyprus

Surfing, foiling, winging – what is that again? New and daring ways to glide across the water. You can try them all in Cyprus.

Day one: Great

EIt’s a warm October day in Cyprus, and the Mediterranean on the south coast lies still. It’s as smooth as one of the taut windsurf sails heating up in the sun in front of the bamboo hut on the beach. In other words: There is no wind, and therefore the surf school employees are bored in the bamboo hut. They look at the sea and at their fingernails, check the cords of a kite umbrella, look at the sea, screw a mast base onto a board, look at their fingernails again and then resignedly at this small window on the hut facade. There, a digital screen shows the wind speed: a sad 2 km/h.

The surf center is part of the Robinson Club Cyprus, a very large club hotel with 700 beds, known and popular for its wide range of water sports options. And also so that you can try them out together as families. Only today the weather doesn’t really cooperate. 2km/h! But luckily there is a way of getting around on the water where you are happy that there is no wind, or at least no headwind: stand-up paddling, also known as “Supen” in modern German. Out of sheer boredom, the employees have already carried five boards to the shore, so we – two adults and three pubescent children – just have to get the paddles and get started. We venture out within the breakwaters to the east and admire the finely branched sand patterns on the seabed in the water, which is only waist-high. Then, with the wide sea in front of our eyes, we paddle out and now have a billowing swell under our boards, turning around the pier of the Alaminos fishing port. And because it quickly gets too hot for us while paddling under the cloudless sky, we keep jumping into the 24 degree water. Cheers to Cyprus, where it’s still summer in late autumn and already summer in spring, while it can already be quite uncomfortable at home.